Guest “I really couldn’t make this sort of schist up if I was trying” by David Middleton
Reporting from Ice Mud Station Dallas… The pool is now ice-free for the first time on record (the record started very recently… ;).
Texas to Add 35 Gigawatts of Wind & Solar in Next 3 Years — Boosting Grid Resilience
By Zachary Shahan
Published 16 hours agoClearly, the news story of the week — well beyond CleanTechnica — has been Texas and some neighboring regions freezing over and losing electricity. The vast majority of the power plants that went offline were thermal power plants (mostly natural gas). They were not equipped enough for the cold. A number of wind turbines were also down because no one had bought the “cold-weather package.”
[…]
CleanTechnica
To the extent Texas is adding wind & solar to the grid, these plans were made long before Winter Storm Younger Dryas. The notion that this is for the purpose of “boosting grid resilience,” is totally fracking retarded.
Solar is flat-out not a factor in Texas’ electrical grid. While wind is a key component of our grid, generating 20-24% of our electricity over recent years. It totally failed over the past 10 days. As temperatures dropped below normal in the DFW area on February 7, wind output dropped from 35-65% of capacity to 10-30% from February 9-18. Over the same time period coal and natural gas power plants ramped up to nearly full capacity very quickly. As of Sunday February 14, the system was functioning normally. As temperatures plunged from 20 to 40 °F below normal in the DFW area, some thermal power plants went offline for a variety of weather and demand surge related issues and by Monday morning ERCOT was in full emergency mode.
The graph above is preliminary, a “work in progress.” I’m still working on gathering more detailed data on capacity by fuel type. However, it clearly demonstrates that more wind generation capacity would have been as useless as mammary glands on a bull.
ERCOT’s single biggest failure was the lack of reliable backup capacity for wind power… ERCOT expected the wind power to fail under these conditions. It appears to me that the only way ERCOT could have made it through this unscathed, would have been for natural gas, coal and nuclear power to have delivered 80-90% of capacity for 7-10 days during record-cold weather (20-40 °F below normal in the DFW area) with a system geared toward hotter than normal weather. This was not a realistic expectation. ERCOT also failed to be sufficiently proactive in implementing rotating outages and when they did, they were unable to adequately rotate the outages.
Regarding the “cold-weather package” horst schist…
Why wind turbines in New York keep working in bitter cold weather unlike the ones in Texas
Updated Feb 19, 2021Syracuse, N.Y. — Texas Republicans were quick to blame the state’s wind turbines for the massive power outages that millions of Texans experienced this week during an unusual blast of cold weather.
Texas leads the nation in wind power, with nearly 15,000 wind turbines producing 23% of the Lone Star State’s electricity last year. Many of the turbines shut down when the cold descended on Texas.
[…]
But we couldn’t help but wonder why wind turbines in cold-weather states like New York can operate in the winter with seemingly little trouble when their counterparts in Texas can’t.
[…]
“There are a variety of cold weather and anti-icing technologies that are used on wind turbines in the coldest regions,” she said. “These technologies help prevent the buildup of ice on turbine blades, detect ice when it cannot be prevented, and remove ice safely when it is detected.”
[…]
The sensors can even tell which blades have ice on them and which ones don’t. When ice is detected, heating elements inside the blades turn on to melt the ice.
For safety reasons, the turbines are shut down while the heating elements melt off the ice, Kurt said. That way, there’s no chance of ice flying off spinning blades, potentially damaging the turbines or, worse, striking someone on the ground, she said.
“We’d rather the ice drop below the turbine,” she said.
Once the ice is removed, the turbines are turned back on and the blades can safely spin in the wind again.
In Texas, wind turbines are not equipped with such de-icing packages because operators there never expected to need them, Kurt said.
“Turbines in Texas are built for the type of temperatures they usually get in Texas, where it’s 110 degrees, not 10 degrees,” she said. “It’s a cost thing.”
Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Syracuse.com
So… Heating elements (which require electricity) melt the ice and the wind turbines have to be shut down to deice them? Maybe that’s why New York’s wind turbines generate almost no electricity all winter long.
Unlike New York, Texas doesn’t have a nice, steady, winter electricity load. Our load varies quite widely and our wind turbines can generate over 40% of our electricity on favorable days. Even at the peak of our recent deep freeze, Texas wind turbines generated more electricity than New York’s. There are days when Texas wind turbines generate more electricity and then all of NYISO.
Texas needs to winterize at least some portion of its most reliable generation capacity: natural gas, coal and/or nuclear. Texas doesn’t need to emulate what doesn’t work in New York.
Well, if you add enough Wind Turbines, expect that 50% will be covered in ice and another 10% out of commission (as usual), and just count on the wind to be blowing on the days you have a peak demand so that you are generating at least 20% of Name Plate Capacity for those wind turbines still working, you can lower the risk of not being able to meet demand.
So 35GW would equate to ( (35 x 0.9)/2 x 0.2) = 3.15 GW of additional power (assuming the wind is actually blowing). Therefore, using this logic, you only need to build somewhere on the order of 130 GW of new wind turbines and you can meet the needs of out last peak demand (assuming the wind is blowing). Sounds *COMPLETELY REASONABLE* to me… (NOT!)
Can we PLEASE just build some more base load power generation stations and actually fix this problem?
Let me be Griff:
Not true. Blah-blah.
Germany. Blah-blah-blah.
Grauniad Link.
You beat him by 3 minutes, and got the nonsense down perfectly.
since it was mainly the natural gas which failed, seems fair enough.
And as the rest of the world apparently has turbines which don’t freeze, perhaps the new ones will be of those models…
still need some grid scale batteries, demand response and above all a connection to other grids though.
Experts say, you are wrong, ergo, you aren’t an expert, what doesn’t make we wonder. following all your comments 😀
Ask the expert Mr. Middleton what happens to the moisture coming out of the natural gas well that is fed into collection’/gathering pipelines that lack insulation during this event.
Grid batteries:
20GW x 24 hours x $500,000,000/GWh for a day’s outage cover. $240bn every 10 years. when they have to be replaced. Or spend $20bn on 20GW of gas generation that will last 40 years.
Economics is not your strong point, is it?
Like most progressives, griff believes money is printed by government thus costs don’t matter.
Griff has strong points?
He’s a good batting practice pitcher… 😉
He could moon light as a spear catcher.
Keep telling that lie, it is all you ever have.
David m, did not see your post to Griff before I responded. Great to see the T added!
And Data, well that good fun. It looks like wind dropped to zero at one point.
Griff is one of my favorite BP pitchers… And a fellow Star Trek can… 🖖
Griff, natural gas was able to ramp up production 450% during the storm. How much did your vaunted wind and solar power sources contribute?
Natural gas saved the Texas grid. Without natural gas the whole thing would have gone down. And Windmills were of no help. They couldn’t do anything to help the situation.
Had the whole Texas grid gone down, the estimate is it could take a month to get it back up and running, and the costs would be in the tens of billions of dollars.
Natural gas saved Texas’ hindquarters.
Windmills put Texas’ hindquarters in jeopardy.
.
STILL LYING through your teeth, as always, hey griff-tard.
Even the data that showed GAS ramping up by HUGE AMOUNTS to cover for AWOL wind isn’t FACT enough to sway your ACDS diseased little mind, is it !
Natural gas was diverted from power plants to residential users for home heat.
Production from natural gas power plants went up by 450%. It could have gone up by more had the EPA permitted it.
And wind powered electricity disappeared completely
Do you have yet another empty meaningless point to make ?
Griff, did you even read the post?
Yes, there is de-icing technology. The wind turbine has to use electricity and it has to shut down to de-ice.
I looked the other day when one of your collective was going on about de-icing, the best i could find on Vesta was that it “might use 2% of the turbines generated power over the course of a year for de-icing”.
A 3.6mw turbine that makes 35% availability generates 11000mwhr a year, 2% is 220MW.
But assuming de-icing is a small portion of time, that is an awful lot of power that has to come from elsewhere.
Weasel words, 2% of annual production.
Why not state how much it actually takes?
But these are meaningless arguments. Most of the wind production failed because there wasn’t much wind, i was checking various texas locations last monday with my weather channel APP, no wind anywhere.
Same thing we had here in AB for 9 days in the exact same system except it was -30C here.
No wind
So it doesn’t matter if texas spends $5 trillion more on cold hardened wind turbines going forward, when this sort of system hits again, and it will, there will be no wind power
And people will Freeze and die.
If the $80 billion spent on crap renewables in the last 15 years had been spent hardening the real power supplies all we would be arguing about is the polar vortex and what it means
because there would have been no blackouts.
griff is famous for providing links to articles that actually refute the point he’s trying to make.
So it’s probable that griff did not bother to read the article.
“weather channel APP”
I wouldn’t trust TWC to tell me if the sun was up.
Another one of your little hallucinogenic FANTASIES. !
Your congnitive non-functionality on just how much battery would be needed to become “grid-scale” is hilarious.
Its as though you haven’t got a single functioning brain cell inside that empty abyss between you ears.
griff still seems to believe that “grid scale” batteries are capable of powering the entire grid for hours, if not days.
As i showed here in AB during the recent polar vortex, we had functionally zero wind power for almost 9 days, at -30C
Because there is little to no wind in the middle of one of these winter siberian highs.
So our little AB grid for 4.4 mil people, 11GW, would require at least 7 days of grid battery back up, would require 1,850GWHr of battery back up
To ensure everyone doesn’t die.
I think that battery would bankrupt Canada and make a big Dent in USA GDP if you tried to do that.
And if constructed as one piece it would likely bend gravity and create a black hole based on its mass.
All bad
I’m willing to bet that had you had solar power, it wouldn’t have been providing any power either.
“As i showed here in AB during the recent polar vortex, we had functionally zero wind power for almost 9 days, at -30C”
What electrical grid could survive nine days without electricity?
That’s what AOC wants us to gamble on. She wants us to get off fossil fuels and power the world with windmills.
AOC doesn’t seem to understand that sometimes windmills just do not work. Windmills are not ready for prime time.
If you want to live in something other than the Stone Age, then you have to have generating facilities that will work regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Windmills do not meet those requirements.
Windmills are a disaster waiting to happen.
Alarmists need to give up on windmills and solar which are weather-dependent, and put their efforts towards building more nuclear power plants. That’s the future for them.
That battery idea seems problematic: https://naptownnumbers.substack.com/p/battery-grid-backup
Something that rarely gets mentioned is the effect that ambient temperatures have on the efficiency of batteries. In the Texas scenario, cold weather is the situation when back-up batteries would be most valuable. However, they are least efficient under those conditions!
Sodium sulfur grid batteries do not have that problem https://www.energy-storage.news/blogs/sponsored-ngks-nas-grid-scale-batteries-in-depth
How many batteries would you have used?
The article you linked to says nothing about insensitivity to low temperatures. I doubt your claim because chemical reactions in general proceed more rapidly at elevated temperatures. Thus, it seems unlikely that your NaS batteries are immune to reduced performance at low temperatures.
You really are a low-education, non-thinking gullible twerp, aren’t you Brianless.
190 of them in Japan, with an overall capacity of just 530MW on micro grids .. a tiny niche market.
And of course totally unnecessary if you don’t have the idiotic imposition of the UNRELIABILTY of wind farts on your grid.
Looks like griff’s got himself a new lie that he will repeat ad infinitum, no matter how many times he is refuted.
Actual data, shows that natural gas did not fail.
Actual data, shows that wind and solar did fail.
Looks like poor griff still doesn’t have any idea what grid level batteries are and how expensive they are. (I’d love to hear how griff would use 5 minutes of power (what the best grid level batteries provide) was going to solve the problems in Texas)
Griff, NG failed…
Can you see? Can you see and think at the same time? ( Not sarcasm)
Heated turbine blades solves the problem does it? I know I’m not the only pilot that checks this site, but is that really feasible? How fast does ice build up on a turbine blade; will you spend more time and energy de-icing than generating?
(Moderate icing is 1-3″/hr, light icing is less than 1.) If a winter wind turbine in icing conditions is going to work–‘consider immediate exit from the conditions’.
Here is some insight from a Finnish company that offer turbine ice control systems:
https://wicetec.com/technology/
Note they do not recommend the system unless there is reasonably signficant regular icing problem.
David is an armchair quarterback living in a big city.
What I liked about working at power plants is being able to love in the country and have a few acres of land. In cold climates I heated with wood. When I lived in mild climates, I kept a two weeks supply of
wood. My house was never cold.
Although I worked in the power industry, I never owned backup generator. They are dangerous and not very reliable.
Since retiring, I travel in a motorhome and spend lots of time dry camping especially in Texas. For example Crystal beach east of Galveston is 22 miles of beach where you can park for free.
I have three generators. A large propane genny to run two air conditioners. A small gasoline genny to charge batteries. An intermediate size that I can sti
still lift that can run one air conditioner.
It is simple, redundancy and dual fuel source provides reliability.
I do not have solar on the roof of my RV. If it was a good idea I would.
The best I can tell the purpose of wind and solar is to talk about it.
It is like David mentioning ice in his pool. Subtle ways people let you know they are rich.
Nothing wreong with being rich and clueless about making electricity.
I ready your rambles twice, trying to figure out what you are trying to say?
Dave is saying the real power supplies need to be hardened.
What part of that are you disagreeing with?
I think the word “pool” triggered him.
Maybe he’s not in the same gene pool that you are and is suffering from ‘pool envy.’ When I lived in Phoenix, it seemed that there must have been a law requiring everyone to have a pool. Even rental homes had pools.
If I had 2007-2008 to do over again, we wouldn’t have included a pool when our house was built… Although walking across the shallow end without getting my feet wet was kind of fun.
Can you also turn water into wine? 🙂
Still, it beats being POOR, DUMB and CLUELESS. !!
Having pool means you are rich?????
Not in any neighborhood I’ve ever lived in.
Either you have not live in many neighborhoods, or the ones you have lived in aren’t representative. Only 4.1% of home have them.
.
https://aquamagazine.com/news/does-the-future-hold-25-million-new-pools.html
Pools are a LOT more common in homes in the US South-west than in other areas of the country.
And in Florida.
Anyone who did not get lassoed by the housing collapse was able to buy any sort of house they wanted for dirt cheap, even as late as 2013 and in many places even later.
that appears to be a nationwide stats.
What percent of houses have pools in places like NYC? What percent have pools around LA?
It’s not so much about wealth as it is about location.
Where you are from only rich people have a pool?
I suppose by “rich”, you mean “has a job”.
Why is it that you currently have three generators when you state unequivocally that backup generators are dangerous and unreliable?
I think he must be talking about back in the olden days, re them being dangerous and unreliable.
In general, backup generators are seldom used, and so long term reliability is not much of an issue.
And they are only dangerous if you are stupid enough to put one in a place it should never be.
I seem to remember several people on this site with experience in the industry proposing that the maximum renewables you could support on a power grid while still maintaining reliability was around 15%. Looks like Texas has joined both Germany and South Australia in proving that correct.
Only a fool would “diversify a portfolio” by adding less reliable, higher risk, more expensive sources. Diversification is intended to lower risk, lower costs, and increase reliability and output. Green energy does none of those. Real diversification would overweight the most reliable lowest costs sources, and that is why China is focused on coal and nuclear.
Here are 400+ locations that show now warming uptrends, many of them in Texas. Texas and the Green Energy Zealots are literally fighting a non-existent problem. Many areas in Texas are actually cooling.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/21/hadcrut5-shows-14-more-global-warming-since-1850-than-hadcrut4/#comment-3190000
They’re going to do it in Maine too… again.
https://bangordailynews.com/2021/02/21/business/maine-regulator-says-grid-faces-very-difficult-transition-with-shift-to-renewables/
https://energycentral.com/news/maine-public-utilities-commission-examine-electric-grid-modernization-meet-climate-change
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Bartlett
No, no, they have to ask griff, renewables will cause no problems, just in contrast 😀
NPR and print and broadcast media has now actually succeeded in killing a bunch of people with its two-decade long promotion and advocacy of the “Catastrophic/dangerous, CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming/climate change” CONJECTURE.
NPR and print and broadcast media’s continuous proselytizing of climate pseudoscience has now KILLED people.
No amount of attempted blameshifting, hand waving or rationalization can obscure the fact that “renewable” energy is UNRELIABLE.
NPR and the print and broadcast media has blood on its hands.
The insidious ACDS (Anti-Carbon Derangement Syndrome) affliction has infected far more people that Covid-19 virus has or will.
And has done FAR MORE DAMAGE to modern society.
The MSM has become too influential and has more power than many government agencies.
“The Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column.”
I see no mention about all those batteries in EVs being connected to the grid to help in the emergency. I always thought this was the plan when power cuts were due.
Texans are waiting for them to electrify the really big pick-ups before they start buying.
Not those sissified city cars.
How do you inject DC into an AC system without dedicated, high-capacity inverters?
I bet they think they same device that turns the AC household power in the DC that charges the battery (called a rectifier), will do the reverse process.
https://www.usasupreme.com/images-texans-froze-to-death-because-biden-admin-ordered-ercot-to-throttle-energy-output-by-forcing-it-to-comply-with-environmental-green-energy-standards/
Am I interpreting this wrongly, or was the drop in gas output due to being ORDERED by Federal Authorities to CUT POWER to minimize CO2 and other emissions?
You have it wrong. ERCOT applied to allow plants to exceed emissions limits while they faced a general capacity shortfall, but to reinstate limits as soon as the emergency was over. The request was granted.
Adding more wind and solar to boost grid resilience is roughly like applying leeches to help stabilize someone with a gunshot wound to the chest.
David
You said, “The pool is now ice-free for the first time on record (the record started very recently… ;).”
Did the record start with the end of the Play-to-scene?
He jokingly meant it had never frozen before.
Can you say “Pleistocene”?
David has a sense of humor.
I bet the ratepayers…end up paying.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ksat.com/news/local/2021/02/22/cps-energy-holds-update-on-outages-restoration-process/%3foutputType=amp
We ratepayers (and taxpayers) always end up paying.
I moved to Marshall, TX a few years ago from NH, where I’d lived for over 30 years. When I looked for houses around here I was shocked to find that (nearly) everybody uses electricity for everything. I even said to a few real estate agents, “For cry’n out loud, this is the oil and gas capitol of the world, isn’t it?” One of the first things I did after I bought my place was to replace the electric stove with a propane burner; because I prefer cooking with gas. I was lucky, my part of Texas did not lose power at all, but if it had, I could’ve at least made a hot meal and heated up water. Assuming the water lines coming from the street didn’t freeze. I previously was surprised to find that the shut-off valve at the street was barely 8″ below the surface. Guess they never heard of frost lines down here either.
Of course, the reason I came down here in the first place was because I figured 63 New England winters was enough. Joke’s on me.
Fake news. This picture is actually taken in Sweden, not in Texas.
The meme was included for humor. It doesn’t matter where it was actually located. To my knowledge, ERCOT doesn’t deice wind turbines… with or without helicopters.
Is anyone aware of a simple chart that shows capacity vs. capacity factor of either or both wind and solar by state? I’ve spent some time searching, but was not able to find anything that showed both – mostly found sites promoting wind/solar. Also, are there similar charts like the one for NY for states like Iowa? It would be interesting to see if other states/regions with significant unreliable penetration encountered similar problems as TX. The big difference is that TX has much more wind installed than other states coupled with the fact that they shut down 3(?) coal plants in last few years. Sadly, while this fiasco should be seen as a warning, the facts will be twisted in such a way to encourage more unreliables in place of coal, gas, and nuclear. Stupid is as stupid does, or as Dave says – I think it’s Dave anyway – you can’t fix stupid.
Solar… I am not aware of any.
Wind… I have seen some average capacity factor charts by states and/or regions. I don’t have any handy. Texas generally averages around 40%, when the turbines aren’t frozen.
When I say “you can’t fix stupid,” I’m quoting the great Ron White.
This only covers up to 2016,,, https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/332
Thanks Dave. Re: Ron White – I should have credited him as well. One of my favorite comedians.
“I had the right to remain silent… I just lacked the ability.”
–Ron White
Texas Blackout Boosts Australian Bank by Up to $215 Million
https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202102226435/texas-blackout-boosts-australian-bank-by-up-to-215-million
“The notion that this is for the purpose of “boosting grid resilience,” is totally fracking retarded.”
Please moderate your use of language. My niece is a Down Syndrome person. If her father were to hear you use the word retarded the way you did in person, he would punch you.
I would never describe someone with Downs Syndrome as “retarded,” Nor would I describe anyone with genuine developmental disabilities as “retarded.” I certainly did not intend to offend such people or their families. My younger brother suffers from a variety of developmental and neurological disabilities… He is not “retarded” in the modern usage of the word.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/retarded
Walter, you should know better than to criticize a person’s choice of language. That is an attempt to control another person and is wrong. It was not directed at your niece or anyone like her. If your brother or brother-in-law would punch someone for words spoken that he did not like, he runs the risk of being punched right back or spending a night or two in jail. I have considered many people this past year as retarded. The DNC, ANTIFA, BLM, AOC, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, all of the Cuomo’s, many Democrat Mayors, etc.
I have seen a lot of mug shots of those antifas who keep getting arrested in Portland.
For some reason, they all look like they fell out of the ugly tree as small children and broke every single branch with their already ugly face on the way down, then landed face first on some really ugly and sharp rocks.
Lots of people have lots of problems, ailments, things wrong, etc.
None of those things are the fault of random other people, and anyone who acts like knowing someone who has a problem means that they are rightly the self-appointed what-words-people-are-allowed-to-use police, are really just suffering from some sort of emotional problem that they are desperate to shift onto someone else…anyone else. The funny thing is, no one, not even the person who is trying to make people believe that using some word makes someone else the originator of someone else’s problem, thinks that doing so will make anyone feel better or solve one single damned thing.
Should anyone who knows someone who is fat, punch anyone who uses the word fat?
How about if you have a kid or a brother or sister who is extremely ugly?
Should any such person walk around with a chip on their shoulder, and figure that no one should ever use the word ugly, and if they do, then violence against that person is justified?
Does it become someone’s fault that someone else is fat or ugly if they make reference to those conditions in a context wholly unrelated to the person who has made one hypersensitive to any reference to that condition?
I have some people who are very close to some other people I know, who happen to be incredibly stupid.
But it has never occurred to me to take offense towards anyone who calls someone else stupid, for the sake of the stupid people whom are close to people I know.
Does that make me insensitive…or just not a thin-skinned, political correctness-loving, cannot-wait-to-take-offense-where-none was-specifically-meant jerk?
Okay, get each customer and each city to sign a waiver that ties their future power reliability to a particular wind mill or wind farm. Go for it.
You don’t think they paid for all that agenda news for nothing do you?
Real news is so 20th century, or at least pre-Dan Rather.
“Even at the peak of our recent deep freeze, Texas wind turbines generated more electricity than New York’s.”
..
Apples v oranges. NY has 1,722 MW of capacity, Texas has over 28,000 MW of capacity. Why don’t you compare capacity factor? NY runs at 30%, what was Texas running at during the freeze?
New York averages ~26%. Texas currently averages ~40%. On average, wind accounts for nearly 25% of Texas electricity generation. It’s less than 8% in New York.
There is no comparison between New York and Texas. When wind power fails in New York, no one noticed. This is why I ridiculed the Syracuse.com article. Winterizing the least reliable component of the grid would be the dumbest way to prepare for winter conditions that rarely ever occur.
Why does NY waste resources on wind?
Found this the other day on how to keep wind turbines from icing up. https://www.windpowerengineering.com/the-cold-hard-truth-about-ice-on-turbine-blades/ But Wind did not do anything. Just act Germany and the UK this winter during their storms.
Wind power performed better than expected… Only 85% of it failed.
On the morning of the 16th it appears to be a 98 percent failure.
From the article: “The graph above is preliminary, a “work in progress.” I’m still working on gathering more detailed data on capacity by fuel type. However, it clearly demonstrates that more wind generation capacity would have been as useless as mammary glands on a bull.”
That’s right. If all your windmills are frozen or becalmed, it doesn’t matter how many windmills you have, and down goes the grid, if the grid is depending on them.